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Denise had been a bully when Angela had first arrived, prodding her about her princess looks and timid ways.

Lately, as Angela’s belly swelled along with her misery, Denise had softened, admitting that her own parents had not been married, and that she herself had been born at Father Baker’s, over in Lackawanna, a reformatory for some of the worst cases.

And then she said, “You’re not the only one, you know.

But you’re the only one that got pregnant. ”

Angela gasped. “You too? Did he... did that doctor do things to you?”

“Nah, he only likes the pretty ones. But I’ve heard other girls say he did stuff.”

“Why does he keep getting away with it?” Angela shuddered.

“Because we’re here. Because he can. Because we’re nobody.”

Janice joined them, sitting cross-legged on the floor, ignoring Denise’s scowl. “Angela, are you sick?”

“She’s pregnant, moron,” said Denise. She turned to Angela. “Maybe being pregnant is supposed to feel like... well, however

you’re feeling. But, holy shit, what if it’s some horrible disease? Should we tell someone?”

“No,” Angela said with crystal clarity. “Absolutely not.” No disease could be as bad as the thing she feared the most—that

if she got sick, they would make her go back to Dr. Gilroy. When that thought crossed her mind, Angela knew without a doubt

that she would rather die than visit the clinic. “I’m just so... so scared. I have no idea how to do this. Maybe I’ll feel

better in the morning.”

She didn’t feel better. She felt sick and tired all the time. Her stomach churned in horrible knots and she constantly had

to pee. She was terrified, because she didn’t know what was happening to her. Before Gilroy stuck his thing in her, she hadn’t

even known how a baby was made. She didn’t know what was going on inside her, and she had no idea how a baby would get out.

Yet when her entire world felt as though it was about to collapse, it was Janice, of all people, who helped her solve the

mystery. She was a snitch, but she had a kernel of decency.

“I brought you something,” Janice said, scooting next to her in chapel one morning.

“What?” Angela glanced to and fro, making sure the nuns weren’t watching. Talking during chapel brought on swift punishment—a

lashing with someone’s heavy rosary, or extra duties scrubbing floors.

“You know how you’ve been saying how scary it is, bein’ pregnant and all?”

“I guess I’d know that,” Angela whispered with a grimace.

Moving as one, they knelt after the Lamb of God. Janice slipped something into the pocket of Angela’s tunic. “It’s a book,”

she said, giving Angela’s arm a squeeze. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be all that scary.”

After the recessional, Angela grabbed Janice’s hand and ducked into a shadowy corner. She took out the book and squinted through

the dark to read the title: Nine Months’ Reading: A Medical Guide for Pregnant Women.

“What the heck, Janice?”

“I thought it might help,” whispered the other girl. “You got to read it fast, because it goes back to the bookmobile on the

next run.”

The bookmobile. “How’d you manage that? The nuns have to approve every single book we choose.” Angela knew it was one of the

most cherished duties of Sister Rotrude and Sister Bernadette. On bookmobile day, the driver brought the girls’ selections

to the office so the two nuns could make sure the material was “appropriate,” which everyone knew was code for boring.

Janice gave a knowing look. “There’s a way around it. I figured out that Rotrude and Bernadette go to confession right when

the bookmobile comes. So I wait until the driver goes to the office with the books all piled in a crate. Sometimes she goes

to the refectory for a cup of tea. Then I go to the van and grab something off the shelf.” Her gaze shifted as she looked

from left to right. “Is it stealing? Am I gonna burn in hell for stealing?”

Angela gave her hand a squeeze. “Maybe you’ll go to heaven for helping a friend.”

Angela couldn’t wait until nightly lockdown, when she could study the book Janice had slipped to her. By the weak glow of

the bare bulb in the dormitory, she eagerly studied every page of Nine Months’ Reading. It was written by a doctor named Robert Elliot Hall. She could tell right away that it was an actual science book. And she

knew it was the kind of book that would have the nuns hauling everyone into confession if they discovered it.

Gran never talked about sex at all, not one word.

Angela’s ignorance had made the doctor’s attack even more horrifying.

When she told the nuns she believed she was pregnant, they tried to send her back to Gilroy, but she refused to go, so they took her to a woman called a midwife whose clinic smelled of carbolic soap and cigarette smoke.

She was an older woman with a brusque manner who clearly disapproved of unwed mothers.

She performed a painful internal exam and gave Angela a tarry concoction to drink each day, saying it would help the baby grow.

Angela was too frightened to ask the woman for more information.

The Nine Months’ book included hand-drawn pictures, which shocked Angela, since she’d never seen a picture of the human body, inside and out.

One of the early illustrations showed something called the fetus, which started out as a negligible dot like the spot on an

egg yolk. According to the book, the fetus progressed week by week, month by month, until it resembled a seahorse curled into

an egg, only the egg was the mother’s womb. Or the uterus, which was the proper term for it.

Over the next few nights, Angela read the book in secret as fast as she could, studying and sometimes marveling over every

word and illustration.

She learned that the terrifying, fluttery movements inside her were normal. All the peeing and exhaustion and aching back

and fat ankles—normal.

It was not the first time a library book had saved her sanity. Thanks to Nine Months’ Reading , Angela understood a bit more about what to expect. She was still scared out of her gourd but at least she had a better understanding

of what was happening to her. It was pretty overwhelming knowing she was in the process of growing a whole person, sharing

her blood and nutrition with it while her belly grew as round as a hot air balloon. She was apprehensive about the actual

process of giving birth. Previously, she’d known nothing about how a baby got from inside its mother to the outside world.

It was shocking to realize that she would have to push it out through the birth canal between her legs. The doctor might have

to go in with something that looked like giant salad tongs, using the tool to pull the baby out.

Yet, as the stages of gestation progressed, something else was happening inside Angela.

She started to think of the baby as a human being, someone who would emerge from her body as a helpless, tiny infant, needing the love of a mother.

Angela was going to be a mother. The thought filled her with a sweet-sharp stab of emotion.

Yearning. Fear. Anticipation. She was carrying a baby in the comfort of her own body, and it was some kind of miracle.

Those first flutters she felt were a comfort now that she understood.

This child had nothing to do with the person who’d made her pregnant. It was hers and hers alone.

Was the baby a boy or a girl? Angela daydreamed, picking out names. She might name a boy Paul or Sidney, after the most handsome

movie stars she could think of. If it was a girl, she’d call her Alice, like Alice in Wonderland or maybe Alice B. Toklas. Growing up alone with only her grandmother, Angela had been lonely all her life, but with this

baby, she was never alone. She loved that.

She tried to commit each page of Nine Months’ to memory before the book had to be returned. In the middle of reading it one night, she heard a noise in the hallway. It

was the sound of the gate at the top of the stairs closing with a metallic clang.

Mairin was back from her latest punishment. She kept getting in trouble for sassing the nuns or trying to run away. This time

she had a bruise on her cheekbone, her lips were blue with cold, and the neckline of her tunic was torn, but she entered the

dorm with her head held high in that cocky way she had. Proud. Undefeated. The way Angela always wished she could be.

“Hey, are you all right?” Odessa ran over to Mairin and put her arm around her. “I swear, some days we don’t know if you’ll

ever come back. What’d they do to you this time?”

“Dungeon,” Mairin said with a weary voice. She was referring to the shower room in the basement—a cavernous, cobwebbed place

that some girls said was haunted by a trapped woman who shrieked during storms. “It was wicked cold and there were rats, but

at least I could move around down there. I’m up to a hundred push-ups, easy.”

“Oh boy,” said Kay. “Boyo boy!”

Mairin’s mouth trembled with the effort to smile. “Anything to forget about this place, even for a little while.”

“Amen to that,” Angela said.

“How’re you doing?” The iron cot squeaked as Mairin sat down next to her.

“Still pregnant,” Angela said. “I can’t not be pregnant no matter how hard I wish and hope and pray.”

A tear must have slipped out, because Mairin patted her arm and gentled her voice. “Try to take it easy,” she said. She looked

around the circle of eager faces. “We can’t stay here another minute. Swear to God, we have to get out of here.”

“You know that’s impossible,” Denise said. “Nobody gets out of here. I reckon you’re proof of that.”

“There has to be a way. I’ve been studying the situation.”

Angela could practically see her mind working. If there was a way out, Mairin would probably find it.

“The situation is, we can’t get out,” Denise said. “And if by chance we do, they’d bring us right back.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had a lot of time to think,” Mairin retorted. “The laundry carts—”

“You already tried the laundry carts,” Denise pointed out.

“Okay, so I could tie some sheets together and climb right over the wall.”

“The top of the wall has broken glass set in it. And razor wire, remember. You’d be sliced to ribbons.”

Angela shuddered. She couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Still, the prospect of getting away made her ache with yearning.

Away to some fantasy place, where she could take care of her baby and forget how that child had been made.

“It’s too cold out now, anyway,” Odessa said. “Where would you go? Who would you call? You said your own parents made you

come here.”

Mairin studied the rough, planked floor. “I still have his dime,” she said softly.

“Whose dime?” asked Angela.

“Um, this guy I know. He once gave me a Mercury dime to remind me I can call him anytime.”

“Ooh, a guy you’re sweet on?” Janice leaned forward.

Angela felt Mairin tense beside her. “No, not like that,” said Mairin. “He’s my best friend’s big brother, is all. Someone

I’ve always been able to count on.”

“Well, you’re going to need a lot more than a dime if you manage to get to the outside,” Denise said. “Fine, escape if you

want, but then what? Will your family welcome you home? Where’ll you go? How will you live?”

“We’ve just got to stick it out,” Odessa said quietly.

“Easy for you to say. Your sentence is up next summer. The only way out of here for the rest of us is to wait until we’re

eighteen.”

“That’s a hundred years from now. I’m not waiting,” Mairin insisted.

“You won’t make it,” Helen warned.

“Will too,” Mairin said. “You watch me.”

And the girls did watch, some with skepticism, some with dark amusement, all with grudging respect. They watched Mairin try

to escape by pulling a fire alarm and then begging the first responders to take her with them. The men laughed her off, telling

her she ought to be grateful to the Sisters of Charity for giving her a roof over her head.

Another time, she hid in one of the big Pullman bags, but was found out when the bag turned out to be too heavy to lift. One

blustery day, she did try to scale the wall by bringing out the orchard ladder. She managed to get over the wall, and she

went from door to door, asking for help. Someone in the neighborhood was so alarmed by all her cuts and gashes that she called

for help, and Mairin had to return once again.

Some of the girls even put wagers on how long it would take before Mairin was caught and brought back in. In one attempt,

she nearly froze to death waiting for a bus that never came. Once, she did manage to board a city bus, but was ejected because

she couldn’t come up with bus fare, and someone recognized her Good Shepherd uniform.

When the all-girl choir came from St. Mary of the Sorrows to sing Christmas carols, Mairin tried to slip out with them, but they were terrified of her and told Sister Rotrude that some tough-looking girl was hanging around them.

Angela felt exhausted just watching Mairin’s efforts, but she felt inspired as well. Mairin paid for each attempt with penance

and punishment, but it didn’t hold her back from trying again. Mairin never stopped believing in possibility.